gershon hepner Poems

The novel, mental basement, is defined
by differing rooms that make it democratic,
while poetry is always undermined
by autocratic thoughts within the attic,
...

TOPLESS


In order to have insight, do not concentrate:
...

Only if you do not think
can you become the thought
of those who try make you shrink,
and nix you into nought.
...

Buffon declared the vulture
to have the lowest instinct, which he called voracity;
humans consider culture
their highest instinct, lowest when it lacks veracity.
...

Death encourages, said Marianne,
and he who strongly feels behaves
not like an angel, but a mortal man,
a lighthouse facing stormy waves.
...

Endlessly proliferating semiosis
interpreted too fallibly by exegesis
converts the numinous in all five books of Moses
to fodder for best sellers or a doctoral thesis.
...

The fading flower of fidelity
must be watered, like a melancholy ode
Keats might have read while offering Shelley tea,
to prove to him his inspiration always flowed.
...

YES, WE’LL HAVE NO BANANAS

Bananas, now a monoculture,
everyone a Cavendish,
...

Having sex when getting older
may sometimes make a lover bolder
than when in what is called the prime,
though senior moments at nighttime
...

For redemption we may search
while we also stockpile sin,
hoping in the synagogue and church
that the Lord accepts our spin.
...